Hi Guys! I've been away for a while settling into this crazy "Being a Dad" thing, so I haven't been working out much - or sleeping, or eating, or really doing much of anything except changing diapers and what-not - but I'm getting my groove back. My own personal New Year (i.e. my 29th birthday) is coming up soon so I though I'd do it Hobbit-fashion and give a present to everyone else in town. Thus, the Random Number Routine:

Sort of a variation on the old Deck of Card trick, I divided a group of exercises into three categories based on the general direction of the movement (pulling, pushing, and lower body). I'm a spreadsheet junkie, so I typed them out in Google Docs to keep things organized, then I assigned a number to each move by way of a complex algorithm I devised - and don't think that I just arbitrarily slapped them onto the page in some random order and typed numbers straight down an adjacent column. No sir, I would never do something like that . . . ever.

Anyway, Now each movement has a number, and this is where it gets random(er). I found a die-rolling app for my iPhone called Candy Dice which has the advantage of being both free and including all of those funky shaped dice that they make for table-top role-playing games - you could always use analogue dice if you have them laying around, or a random number generator to get the job done. For max strength days, I do two pulls, one push and one lower body, so I roll 4 dice, decide randomly which die goes to which list and copy/paste the moves into the day's routine. Done!

Variations and Such:

-Make up however many of whatever categories work for you - "Love/Like/Hate", "Easy/Moderate/Hard", "Labor/Combat/Agriculture", "Canon/Non-Canon". Be creative!

-Don't mess with categories like some over-analytical goob, just make a list of your favorite moves and give them numbers

-Use the total of the rolled dice to tell you how many reps of each move to do in each set - or maybe the average if you're working off a long list with high numbers.

-Use another random number to tell you how many moves to do that day.

This may not be an everyday thing, but it's a fun little trick for when you're feeling like you want to freshen things up and it'll keep your muscles guessing, since odds are good that you'll never do the same workout twice.

Let me know if you try this, and how you decide to set up your randomness. I'd love to hear some ideas for how to improve on it._________________1 Picture = 1,000 words
0:01s Video = 30 pictures
therefore, 0:01s Video = 30,000 words